the penalties were then heavy indeed; but the nature of treason, according to the Common Law of England, is vague, and judges were sometimes put to rare shifts to find it. Evidently it did not always dwell in the heart alone, but on occasion could be found by a diligent judge considerably below that organ. A tailor, tried for the murder of a soldier, had the following peroration tacked on to his death sentence by a judge who was loyal enough to have been a Canadian: “And not only did you murder him, but you did thrust, or push, or pierce, or project, or propel the lethal weapon through the belly-band of his breeches, which were His Majesty’s!” “To slay a judge under specified circumstances” was also a count in treason, and this knight of the bodkin doubtless longed to thrust his tool into his wordy antagonist. But as a phrenologist has told us, the judge could best illustrate his bump of veneration by the feeling with which Tories of the old school regarded their sovereign. In Canada a man had not to show sedition in order to be suspended; for there was a law to banish him if he were “about to endeavour to alienate the minds of His Majesty’s subjects ... from his person or Government.” She foreshadowed the methods of the Mikado; when it was desired to punish a man “a crime was invented to suit his case”--an inversion of the punishment fitting the crime. Sir James Mackintosh succeeded in passing two bills lessening the list of crimes punished by hanging; but Lord Eldon demurred at the noose being done away with in case of five shillings worth of shoplifting, as the small tradesmen would be ruined. Then, why not quartering and other horrors for treason?